The speculation is growing that David Cameron will at some point announce the Conservatives will follow the Labour party in having all-women candidate shortlists for the 2015 general election. If he does, he’ll immediately be awarded our 2014 ‘Toady of the Year’ award, to sit on his desk alongside his 2012 and 2013 awards.

An extract from the piece:

Believing that the party “shares my values” and is “on the side of people like me” also drives the decision to vote Labour, for both sexes. The Ed Miliband factor appears to work differently for each, however: for men, it is important to see him as the best PM; for women, it matters more whether they like him as a person.

‘For women, it matters more whether they like him as a person.’ Give me strength. We truly do get the politicians we deserve. Another extract:

These things put beltway stories illustrating the supposed “women problem” into perspective. Over nearly a decade of political research I have heard any number of complaints about the Conservative Party, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times misogyny or chauvinism has been raised. Part of the reason for this may be that I am usually speaking to voters who are “in play” – willing to consider switching between parties in one direction or another.

I suspect that people who are particularly attuned to this kind of story, or who think of women as a special interest group with their own “issues”, are less likely to be open to a party that prefers to think of people as individuals rather than in categories. I further speculate that when Harriet Harman tried on The Andrew Marr Show to badger Michael Gove into guaranteeing that the next head of Ofsted would be a woman before the selection process had even begun, the few who agreed with her were all members of the Labour Party.